Unwritten
by thefallensdesires
Summary: "51 in total. 51 good witches and wizards. Where were you hiding when they died? Go. I don't need you. So please leave" In 1994 Remus Lupin comes across an old school friend purely by chance, but it will be another four years before Harry Potter is faced with the aunt he never knew existed.


**Chapter One: The Crazy Blonde Muggle Woman of Hopkins Lane, London.**

**Sometime in August 1994.**

The rain had soaked through Remus Lupin's umbrella long before it was knocked out of his hand by a passing Muggle. Turning the collar of his coat up and lowering his hat he decided to let the "extremely waterproof" knock-off be swept away, the bright colours of the union jack design running onto the pavement.

When the rain picked up he ducked into a side street and stood on the steps of a towering office building, hoping the building's security guard, who was eyeing him suspiciously, wouldn't ask him to move. After five minutes of hurling cats and dogs hatefully toward the ground the rain retreated to a light drizzle. Remus decided to move along the street before the security guard threw him onto it. This would have been typical of his luck. Not for the first time had Remus turned to the muggle world for employment, so far, the weather had been awful.

Of course, he hadn't expected to be searching for employment again so soon after being hired by Professor Dumbledore, it still seemed bizarre to call him Albus, for the position of Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. He hadn't thought that it would still be such a struggle for him to find work after holding that title.

Despite noting that not one of his predecessors had lasted past a year at Hogwarts, Remus had hoped that, perhaps, _he_ would be the exception. Once the news had been leaked that he was a werewolf however, he knew that it wasn't in anyone's best interests for him to stay. The letters he had received even after leaving had been unscrupulous enough as to leave him in no doubt as to what might have happened had he not resigned. To his credit Dumbledore had tried to use his position on the Wizengamot to help Remus find employment within the Ministry, but they had proven to be as welcoming toward hiring him as they had been seventeen years before - when he had first left Hogwarts.

"Let go of me! I do not need escorting from the premises thank you. I do know my way out. I have been working here for seven years after all! Seven years Robert, or do you not remember that?"

The sound of a woman shouting drew Remus's attention from his thoughts and back to the steps he had been standing on. The security guard, who had kept a careful eye on him, was now holding up his hands in defence against an angry petit blonde woman who was wielding a cardboard box - and trying not to fall out of heels which seemed too high for her to balance on.

"I'm sorry Jen, but it's not my fault. There's no need to take it out on me."

If it was amusing to see this big hunk of muscle cowering from a woman who was half his size, all thoughts of laughing went out of Remus's mind when Jen turned her piercing blue eyes onto him and began to charge down the steps.

"Here hold this a second." She thrust the box into Remus's hands and turned back towards the building.

Up to four storeys high, there were people pressing their faces up against the glass of the windows to enjoy the spectacle; as Jen shouted up at the largest window: "MR PECKHAM I KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING ME AND I HOPE SHE'S WORTH IT! THAT DIRTY ROTTEN HUSSY WON'T BE ABLE TO HACK MY JOB! YES I KNOW IT WAS YOU SUZIE REYNOLDS. GO TO HELL!"

With a flourish she held one finger high up at the building. Remus didn't know where to look.

For a moment he considered dropping the box onto the floor and running as far away from the crazy muggle woman as possible, but any plan that formulated in his mind then had come too late; she had taken her shoes off, dropped them into a massive black handbag, and turned to him and huffed, "come on, let's leave."

"I'm sorry but do I know you?" As sorry as he wasn't sure he felt for her, as much as he felt for the office she had just been expelled from, Remus wasn't quite ready to be turned into a slave just yet.

"I'm Jennifer. Friends and you may call me Jen. I'm sorry that you had to see all that but could you please be a sweetheart and help me carry my things over to my flat? I live just around the corner."

Till the day he died, Remus could never be sure why he had agreed to escort her home. Especially when "just around the corner" proved to be just around the corner from the second tube station they had to travel to.

* * *

After an hour and a half of switching between muggle transportation and walking they finally reached what he hoped would be Jen's flat.

In that "brief" amount of time the woman had somehow managed to fill Remus in with every detail of her life leading up to the moment when she had been fired, or pushed (as she put it), from her post as top columnist at popular magazine "TeenBeat" by, "that big-footed witch Suzie Reynolds." His only hope, as Jen opened the door to her flat, was that he wouldn't have to hear any more theories as to how exactly Suzie had managed to usurp Jen from her job within the same year she had stolen the heart of Jen's ex-fiancé Gary.

"Where do you want me to put your box?" Remus wasted little time in asking.

"Over there," Jen said depressively, and pointed vaguely in the direction of a corner cabinet on which sat a black block Remus seemed to remember being called a television. He set the box on top of it, then stretched out the muscles in his aching back and looked around the white painted room.

Someone, presumably Jen's artistic flat mate (Effie?), had painted a delicate black vine with gilded red roses stretching from the bottom of the white painted brick work wall, behind the large black corner sofa, leading to the top. On a large window sill cushions had been scattered along the length to make a comfortable seat. When the last of the afternoon light shone through the glass pane Remus saw the silvery outlines of lily flowers - their patterns falling onto the surface of a large oak book case stretched halfway across the third wall of the apartment. The bookcase started out flat on the floor and then seemed designed to look like the stalk of a plant bending toward the sunlight; it leaned vertically toward the television cabinet and came to a stop when it met the wall with the featured window, beneath this strange centrepiece hung an even more mysterious network of photo frames. Mysterious because there seemed to be something in a few of the pictures which Remus recognised, though as he looked he couldn't think what.

When Jen walked back into the room, Remus was caught out staring blankly at a sun damaged photograph which had been stuck into a small blue frame. He blinked, and looked away. Then blinked and looked back again. Not at the photograph, but at Jen.

She had changed from the neat black pencil skirt dress she had been wearing into a low cut strap top and tight fitting three quarter length trousers. In that outfit, little was left to the imagination. Remus tried to look past her shoulder at the door, stating awkwardly, "It was nice to meet you. I really should be going now."

Jen's smile showed her teeth, "please. Let me get you a drink first." She spun round on the high heel of her trainer, without waiting for an answer. As she departed Remus kept his eyes on the back of her blonde ponytail, and perched himself on the edge of the sofa.

"What would you like?" Jen called across the room, there was only a breakfast bar to separate the kitchen – he couldn't leave without her noticing. He asked for a cup of tea and she brought it to him, along with a bottle of red wine and a half empty glass. She poured herself more wine and sat down next to him - her body leaning into his as she pulled her feet beside her on the sofa. Remus's grip on the mug tightened at her familiarity.

Jen held up the wine bottle, "sorry did you want any?"

He shook his head. "Tea's good," he croaked awkwardly.

She put the bottle down and stayed so that she was basically leaning on him. "Thank you _so _much for walking me home today. I know that you didn't have to come all that way but it felt…" Jen paused in speech for the first time since he had met her and he turned, with difficulty, to see what was wrong. Starting to flap her hands in front of her eyes manically, the woman let out a strange whimpering noise. Remus stared in shock and hoped she wasn't having a fit.

"Sorry," Jen gasped, "Sorry..." She breathed out dramatically, her chest heaving. "It's just… I can't believe I've lost my job!"

Remus nodded, and tried not to look at her chest, as the blonde woman with piercing blue eyes who had ordered him about all afternoon finally broke down. Slopping wine over his trousers, she buried her head against his shoulder; her tears soaking through his already damp coat. He tried to console her by patting her back but this gave her hiccups, resulting in further wine spillages. Unsure what to do, other than be used as a cushion, he took the glass away from her and lay uneasily back against the sofa. Jen sobbed stridently into his chest.

* * *

It took an hour for her to fall asleep and another ten minutes for Remus to move her delicately from his lap and back down onto the seat, with a cushion propped underneath her head in place of his legs.

He had just finished washing up her glass, and his mug, and was just about to leave when the door of the flat was opened and a woman of about the same age as Jen walked in. At first she seemed to only see Jen and walking across the length of the flat she took her coat off and wrapped it cosily around her friend's shoulders.

"Lay off the booze Podge," she chuckled, and then paid sharp attention to Remus who was fetching his coat from where he'd taken it off to wash up.

"And who are you?" Effie glared at Remus. Remus froze. For one foolish moment he had thought he could leave without too much trouble.

"I'm a friend of Jennifer's. I helped her to remove some things from her office today."

"Friend! Or unsuspecting victim?"

Effie laughed and her momentarily strict expression now looked softer, and more approachable. Remus looked at her questionably.

"Your face!" The woman pulled auburn curls back into a loose bun and then walked over to the kitchen to join him. "And bless you, you even washed up." This statement only served to confuse Remus all the more. Seeing this, Effie decided to explain, "It's just… Jen! She does this to men like you all the time."

"Men like me?" Trying not to feel too offended Remus took off the marigold gloves he had worn to do the washing up with and hung them back over the tap.

"There is a type of-" she cut off talking when she saw the look on his face. "Never mind. What happened today anyway, you said that you helped her remove some things from her office?"

"Jennifer was fired today. It seems that her bosses no longer think that she is of the appropriate age range for the job of teen advice columnist."

Effie made a face and looked in the direction of the snores coming from underneath her coat, "that must have hit her hard." She placed the papers she had been holding in her hand when she had walked in onto the breakfast bar and moved over to the fridge to help herself to orange juice. "Well thank you for your time, Mr… Sorry what was your name again?"

"Lupin," Remus said and then held up a photograph which Effie had placed down. "Where did you get this from?"

Effie, busy pouring herself a glass of juice, turned around to frown at him. "He was… my grandmother's dog. Why?"

"He looked like…" Remus hesitated, "a dog I used to know."

Unfazed by his strange behaviour Effie shrugged, "could be him. He was a stray when my grandmother found him and he ran away again just before she died. He was such a scruffy old thing. What did you call him?"

"Padfoot."

From the sofa, Jen mumbled something nonsensical in her sleep and then continued to snore.

"Funny name that, though not as funny as what my grandmother called him," Effie commented. "No wonder the poor thing ran away, she used to call him Snuffles."

"What's that?" Jen mumbled sleepily.

Remus buttoned up his coat. "I'd better go," he whispered to Effie before making a swift exit.

"See you," she laughed, watching the strange man bolt out of her flat as so many men had done before. "My god, you really do know how to pick them Podge. Though, I suppose he was kind of cute," she took a further sip of juice and looked down at the picture which she had unwittingly cut out of the missing pet poster. Jen's eyelids started to flicker. Effie took her collection to her bedroom and left her friend to sleep.

* * *

Walking out of the apartment building Remus left with more questions about those Muggles than he should have. This was not the first time he had been side-tracked in London but this was the first circumstance in which his outlawed friend Sirius Black had made such an appearance. He hoped that picture was only a coincidence; he didn't suppose any information as to Sirius's whereabouts could be gained from that picture alone anyway – he was a lost pet as far as Effie's grandmother was concerned - but there other things which would continue to bring his mind back to that apartment in Hopkins Road, and the strange tenants who lived there.


End file.
